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In this interview, Sherif Mityas, Chief Experience Officer of TGI Fridays shares both - TGIF’s experiences and his advice - for his marketing peers to learn about AI-driven customer experiences, choosing the right martech components, outcomes of their CDP investment and skills that a modern-day marketing team needs to thrive.

How have you seen the concept of ‘digital marketing’ evolve over the last few years? What have been the most significant areas of transformation and does that vary by geography?

Digital marketing is clearly no longer an afterthought or to be viewed as a separate channel – it must be an integral part of an overall consumer strategy. Consumers continue to force this fundamental change through their actions. We no longer can capture our customers’ attention through traditional media channels alone – the transition to mobile and extended media platforms has accelerated the need for all Brands to extend their messaging and become more tailored to today’s consumer's behaviors and need for “always on” connection. This is not a geographic or demographic phenomenon – it is a sea change across every customer segment in which we operate today.

Technology is a crucial enabler of CX today. What has been the philosophy at TGIF when it comes to choosing the right technology and vendors for your martech stack?

The only thing constant about Technology is that it constantly changes. At Fridays, we look to answer three simple questions as it relates to any new technology or innovation for our brand.

First: is it right for our Guests? Will it improve the experience, create more/better engagement and/or drive enhanced loyalty for our Brand? Any innovation must pass this critical first set of challenges to proceed.

Second: can we execute it? Putting in technology that does not provide the right user experience or doesn’t allow for easy and frictionless execution is simply wasted investment. We don’t just ask “if” the technology is right for us, but “how” do we intend to use it and are we organizationally ready to fully leverage its capabilities.

Finally, we ask if there is a meaningful ROI? Everything we do must have a return – we focus on specific Guest and Financial metrics to ensure we are implementing innovation that creates real value for the Brand moving forward.

At the end of the day, our biggest learnings have always come back to “listen to the guest”. Ensuring we always look at our technology and innovation from their viewpoint vs. our own internal thinking alone is critical.

Additionally, ensuring you have a robust pilot and testing process gives our organization the flexibility to trial many things and many partners but quickly identify and focus on only the few that are able to clear our three key questions to move forward.

What mistakes do you think marketing leaders tend to make when it comes to building, owning and delivering a truly ‘consistent and seamless CX’ in an omni-channel world?

I believe the key is to stop thinking about “channels” entirely. Instead, think about your customer’s “journey” before, during and after their engagement with your Brand. Customers don’t think about how or why something should be different when they’re on Facebook or talking to Alexa or inside your store – they only care about how easy and seamless the experience is at that point in their journey.

Taking an approach as the consumer instead of the brand marketer opens up an entirely new way of thinking and the actions that then need to be created/tested/implemented to ensure a more omni-channel experience.

They key is to always think through these journeys as “personalized” to each individual consumer – the moment you think about segments based upon demographics, age groups, geography, is the moment you’ve lost that individual consumer. The latest technologies in AI and machine learning now allow any Brand to create specific content across channels for a unique and personalized experience – those that take advantage will differentiate themselves and win, those that do not will find the gap between winners and losers grow exponentially.

CDPs – with their promise of a unified customer view - are the new magic bullet in marketing in the digital age. MTA runs a very popular CDP Explainer Seriesand our readers would love to know the key arguments you made internally to win leadership support for the CDP investment.

To create differentiated content and truly personalize your customer engagement, you must fully understand each unique customer. The law of averages does not work in today’s marketing and technology environment…

The only way to accomplish this is to understand Mary, Paul and Susan as unique customers.

The current challenge that Customer Data Platform (CDP) companies address is to allow us the ability to stitch all the data across all our customer touch-points, both inside and outside our stores, to help us create these individual customer views. This is a critical first step to any personalization effort – any monies spent on marketing without understanding your customers is wasted effort and an inefficient ROI. This is the foundation of any business case for the utilization of a CDP and the need for funding for this critical first step.

Through the utilization of our CDP efforts and our subsequent ability to target individual consumers, we experienced significant improvements in all key metrics regardless of the individual marketing program.

The system as a whole improved in both effectiveness and efficiency as measured by all our consistent guest-facing and financial metrics. All consumers are looking for Brands to understand and truly know them in order to create differentiated and relevant connections which manifests in increased engagement, sales and frequency.

Martech and automation enable customer engagement at scale, but can also lead to impersonal/ frustrating experiences for customers. In your online + offline engagement model, what have been the biggest lessons in balancing scale and reach with delivering an authentic, truly personalized 1:1 interaction?

We employ a number of AI-driven chatbots, personalized marketing messages and even voice interactions that allow us to engage our Guests on a personalized level whenever and wherever they may be. The technology allows us to do this at scale so that we can support millions of individual conversations all in real time without significant human interaction.

We have worked very hard to ensure our AI technology creates content in our Brand voice and specific to the channel/platform we are utilizing for a specific guest interaction. The AI engines we employ are actually more “personal” than our past interactions which treated every Gen X female in a certain arbitrary segment exactly the same – the technology now allows us to interact with Susan very different than Mary – even though they happen to “fit” in the same segment we’ve used in the past.

Additionally, the progression of “emotional AI” is now being utilized in customer contact centers where consumers cannot tell the difference between human and machine. This will only accelerate and infiltrate all aspects of Marketing as this technology continues to advance.

At the end of the day, consumers want to be heard, they want to be understood and they want frictionless engagement – make it easy for them, make it personal and relevant and they will reward that with their dollars.

Whether those needs are supplied by a human or a machine will become less relevant as the capabilities become merged – the value for the Brand is in the ability to deliver that level of personalization and authenticity in an effective and efficient fashion at scale which will only be possible through technology.

Given the new-age customer, how do you see the concept of engagement and loyalty evolving in the near future? What trends and innovations are you excited about trying in your CX strategy going into 2020?

Engagement and loyalty are unfortunately fleeting concepts for today’s consumers. In the age of “what have you done for me lately…”, the Brands that remain nimble and relevant to changing needs and trends will prosper. The key is to remain part of their consideration set. At Fridays, we want to remain part of our consumer’s consideration for any experiential food and drink occasion. In order to do that, we need to be part of their conversations with friends, co-workers, and family when that age-old question comes up – “What do you want to do tonight?” We need to be part of those social interactions which are occurring on mobile devices, on social platforms and with others that create a natural engagement to our Brand. Understanding not only what our customers like and dislike, but how they interact within their social circles, who influences the decision on where to have that first drink or last nightcap is critical to remaining relevant and engendering loyalty.

We are just starting to scratch the surface on what AI will enable us to do to create even more differentiated and unique experiences for our Guests. The ability to create special VIP-like experiences for each and every guest will be the key to our success. Imagine the host or hostess greeting you by name and having your favorite drink at the bar waiting for you – how special would that make you feel, how much loyalty would that experience generate…the technologies exist today to make that happen. Moving forward, I am excited about the future progression of AI and its interaction with the growing medium of Voice. In the next couple years, over half of all online searches will be activated by consumers speaking into a device. Utilizing voice vs text and having fun, social conversations with our Guests whether they’re at home, in their cars or even walking into our restaurants will be a completely different experience. We’ll have come full circle – just like those early days in our first restaurant and the authentic and personal conversation between Bartender and Guest – this time in the digital world – anytime and anywhere.

The composition of a marketing team has changed dramatically, starting with the role of and expectations from the CMO. What are the most important skills sets needed on a modern marketing team?

I personally believe that the skills of any Marketing team are still founded on the principles of ensuring the successful promotion and representation of the Brand to drive customer awareness, engagement and loyalty. Clearly, in today’s environment, the level of data/analysis and technology has allowed for much greater focus and measurement on the efficiency and effectiveness of the Marketing function and spend. Marketing teams that embrace these added capabilities and truly understand both their potential and shortcomings tend to be more successful. At the end of the day, all the technology and data can still lead to bad decisions – we still need smart, creative and passionate individuals leading our Marketing functions that can balance the art vs the science into right decisions for their specific Brand. The level and pace of change in Marketing technology can be overwhelming, but the individuals that can utilize these new technologies to make better and faster fact-based decisions.

It’s not the Marketing team’s job to be technologists, but the ability to quickly adapt and rethink past marketing processes utilizing new technology is a critical component for future success.